Pleasant Bay Boating still looking for space

Pleasant Bay Community Boating, and several other non-profits, have dropped their bid for one of the buildings on the town's historic Marconi property.

Doreen Leggett dleggett@wickedlocal.com @dleggettCodder

Pleasant Bay Community Boating, and several other non-profits, have dropped their bid for one of the buildings on the town's historic Marconi property.

Last week, Pleasant Bay met with their potential partners – The Children's Fund, and Monomoy Community Services – and decided the Marconi bungalow was not exactly what the groups need. They agreed to withdraw from both the designation as tentative developer of the last Marconi bungalow and to withdraw their application for Chatham Preservation Committee assistance.

Roz Coleman, a member of the board of directors for the sailing association, said the search continues for a location on Pleasant Bay that can accommodate a shelter to add a shore school to the boating groups classes.

Coleman said she forwarded all the plans and estimates the group gathered to reuse the building to Bill Bystrom who serves on the Chatham Housing Committee. The bungalow needs to be reused after mold and lead paint is removed, its mechanical systems updated and is compliant with the Americans With Disability Act, she said. Since the other Marconi buildings on Old Comer's Road are part of Chatham's community housing stock, it seems logical that the bungalow be added to that usage, Coleman wrote in an e-mail.

Sam Streibert of Streibert Associates Architects contributed plans to make the building handicapped assessable. Judy Bersin from Ryder Wilcox contributed a site and parking plan. These generous gifts should contribute to the eventual reuse of the building, Coleman added.

Coleman also said the owners of an 18-by-30-foot outer beach cottage now being stored at Ryder's Cove Boat yard offered the use of their building. Since early last fall, a Pleasant Bay Boating committee has been looking for a water front location on Pleasant Bay that could accommodate that cottage, with their dream site being Jackknife Harbor. However, the velocity level, or possible wave height in a one hundred year storm, is 18 feet, which means that pilings to accommodate the cottage would have to be too high. So the Pleasant Bay had to decline the offer of the cottage. The sailing school plans to hold classes as usual on Jackknife Cove this summer, but is still looking for a home base.